Thoughts

Opinion pieces, newest first.

119 articles

Monopoly or Market?

Yesterday, I was at a training in Williamson County. A woman raised her hand and asked, "What do we do about the media?" "What do you mean?" I asked her. "We have a local paper that never reports anything but left-wing junk. How do we get them to report the facts and not just...

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The Popularity of Listening and Doing

We hire our representatives to listen to us and then do what we ask of them. It isn't hard. What becomes hard is when they have an agenda that competes with what we ask of them. An election, if an incumbent has a viable opponent, becomes a binary job performance review - approve...

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Saving for the Future

I love the enthusiasm that spills out of the grassroots campaign training seminars that I'm giving. It's exciting to watch people realize that they can profoundly impact elections with just a bit of discipline and commitment. The first part of the seminar is helping the...

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Robert

Robert was a good man - a really good man. And I say "was" because regrettably he passed away over the weekend. I found out in a phone call from a friend early Sunday morning. I'd spoken to Robert on Valentine's Day for a half hour about Grassroots America things. We cracked...

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Laughing Our Way to Innovation

Laughter comes from being surprised. Whether it's an unexpected fall someone has, where we apologize for laughing and then ask if the person is okay... or the baby who giggles at the peekaboo game... or the woman laughing at the comedian onstage who told an undiscovered truth...

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Restoration

Over time, everything tends to break down. Rocks weather. Buildings fall into disrepair. Our bodies age, and increasingly with less and less grace. This is a concept called entropy. In thermodynamics, entropy is the spare, unused energy that can spawn chaos. It tends to move...

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Attraction

In life, when we encounter something we don't like, it's easy to criticize. And so we do. "This is a problem!" we announce to the world. Thumbs down. The harder thing to do is to problem-solve. Solving a problem requires optimism that the problem can be solved. It requires a bit...

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Chasing the Right Target

The Republican Party of Texas legislative priorities two years ago were chiefly about culture issues and rule of law. Election integrity, border security, stop sexualizing Texas kids, etc... none of them had to do with money. When I looked at the big lobbyists in Austin and what...

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Political Velocity

A guy named Hugh taught me to set the expectations of others when I was in my 30's. At the time, I thought, "Why am I responsible for their expectations?" But as I matured in life, I came to understand that anger and disappointment only happen when someone encounters something...

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Sunlighting Bill Kristol

Bill Kristol is an ardent anti-Trumper. Regarding what Trump had accomplished in the first 100 hours of President Trump's new term in office, he said: "Welcome to North Korea," alleging that this is a dictatorship and we will all suffer for it. He pretends to be a Republican...

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Texas "bot" Nonsense

The grassroots movement has been called "astroturf" for a long time. Nancy Pelosi did it when the TEA party emerged back in 2009. "It's not really a grassroots movement. It's astroturf by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich instead...

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Blind Spot

You may have heard of the infamous dead zone in your eye called the "blind spot." It's where the optic nerve attaches to the back of the retina, and in that particular spot, you have no rods or cones, which are the sensors that capture images to send to the brain. You are truly...

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Craftsmanship

Anyone can hammer a nail. Given enough time, anyone who has the strength to pick up a hammer can eventually apply the hammer to the nail with enough frequency to get the nail to embed into the wood. But not everyone can consistently hammer a nail straight and smooth into the...

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Dirty Politics

You were a teenager once. Your mother certainly got after you at least a few times to keep your room clean, and maybe one time, she walked in and, completely frustrated with you, she said, "You have a half an hour, buster, and when I come back, I don't want to see this mess any...

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Unattractive Litter

I went to Vegas with my parents in 2009 or so, and while we had a lot of fun seeing a few shows (such as ventriloquist Terry Fator) and going to the dam, the trip was soured by the filth that was everywhere in the street. All along the main drag, these cards with half-nude women...

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